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It’s been a while since my last post now so i thought i’d give you an update.

Since my last post i have been attending a beginners course in silver jewellery at Ravstedhus in Denmark. the class was very good for me as to learning things from scratch and getting rid of some old habits etc. It also gave me a creative boost, and i am very happy about that. I post pictures of my work at my instagram account: http://instagram.com/tommybryden and you are welcome to follow me and give comments there. since my last post in march i have started experimenting with sandcasting. i know most people doing this uses wax carving to make the models for casting but i haven’t bought any wax yet because i have other things that i feel like buying first. like a micromotor and setting punches. So my models has so far been made of fimo clay witch is ok exept i don’t have an oven for curing it at my workshop yet. As you can see i have some more learning to do in that department =)

Basically my main interest is stonesetting in rings, and i am always distracted by images of rings that wants to be made if im trying to make pendants or other things. As you can see below.

Self doubt can be a fierce enemy in my hobby, especially when i have a custom piece that im going to make and i remember things i have done wrong on earlier projects. something simple like bezel settings can easily go wrong if im pushing myself to get finished and get sloppy. Filing the bezel to high, putting the stone in without a hole in the back in case it gets stuck, making the bezel rocker slip and make a fat scratch in the rock etc are things i have done that made my heart skip a beat or two.

Recently i cleaned up my workspace and painted my bench blue for creativity’s sake and i got by equipment organized somewhat so in that spirit i decided to get going on a stone i was commissioned by my friend to make a pendant of maybe half a year back. but the serpentine rock has a hardness of 3-4,5 on the mohs scale witch means i could destroy the stone really easy. but i went at it and after some nerve wrecking days of work i finished it. And i must say i was really proud of the result. And seeing the reaction of my friend as i gave it to her was deeply satisfying.

Thats was all for this post and thank you for reading it and your interest in my jewellery rantings =)

So after doing mainly graffiti art all my life to doing jewelery is quite a step.

Trying to get seen by decorating walls and whatnot now transfer to decorating people.

Allthough i haven done any illegal graffiti in many years i still feel connected to the underground movement that does what they please to brighten up the grayness in life. But me for my sake started to think about the results of my actions, both for people who has to clean up after me and myself if i should get caught doing vandalism. Beeing an anarchist at heart i found myself having become more conservative and by chance i got a job as a security guard. Getting cought doing vandalism would most likely get me fired and i could forget about living with my wife in Australia.

One of the perks of my current job you can call it, is that it is often very slow and long (12hrs) shifts where there is hours between the times i actually have to do anything. I found working with a jewellery piece is a nice little way to make the time fly a little faster, and also very rewarding. Allmost every task i need to do can be done in spare time while working, from sawing, sanding, metal clay work, even torching my piece works if there are no fire alarm where im at. And chain maille jewellery is abit like knitting and can be done everywhere. And recieving comissions makes me feel safer accepting them because im not confined to afterhours to do all of the work. And beeing an amateur still, every piece is still a learning experience even if i think i know exactly what to do 🙂

Here is a picture of some of the things i have made untill now, good and bad ones.

Big bag of black spinell and quarts, to the sides sapphires and the bought sapphire in the bottom.

It started in Australia on our honeymoon.

Some of my wife´s friends gave us a suitcase containing 2 bags of sediments/wash from a river in Glen Innes, that supposedly contained sapphires. So after fossicking thru them during our stay, only small amounts of sapphires was the result, which again led me to buy an actual 3ct sapphire at the shop in Glen Innes to give my wife who had to endure my treasure hunting instincts that consumed quite a few hours of our honeymoon.

So I gave her the sapphire but what to do with it?

So I started thinking about ways for her to wear it, and I started youtubing jewellery making videos and discovered that there was something called ´precious metal clay´ that could be moulded in to shape and burned to become nice silver jewellery. This looked interesting to learn but there were no classes in my neck of the woods so I kinda let it be with the thought. I kept up the youtubing and saw many videos about all sorts of jewellery making techniques, and then as a good surprise my wife had booked me into a class as a christmas present, at London Jewellery School.

It was such a nice class and i booked her in as well so we did it as a couple, and I learned so much by doing it with a teacher present as opposed to trying out on my own.